"And I wrote my happy songs, every child may joy to hear": The poetry of William Blake in the middle school classroom

ALAN Review, Winter 2003 by Kazemek, Francis E

Miss Stretchberry wanted her students to love poetry (Creech 2001). She read to them daily both from the works of acknowledged masters and contemporary poets and encouraged them to write. Jack, an initially skeptical and reluctant writer (boys don't write poetry; girls do), was intrigued by William Blake's "The Tyger." (I have retained all of Blake's spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.) He responded to Miss Stretchberry's oral reading of the poem by writing that he really didn't understand it. However, he admitted, "at least it sounded good/in my ears" (Creech, 2001, p. 8). Not only did it sound good in his ears, but it continued to do so, especially after he composed his own poem based on "The Tyger's" rhyme scheme. He wrote Miss Stretchberry that the sounds of the poem were in him "like drums/beat-beat-- beating" (Creech, 2001, p. 9).

The impact of Blake's poem upon Creech's fictional character was strikingly similar to the effect "The Tyger" had upon one of our major American poets as a child. In an interview Bill Moyers asked Adrienne Rich about the first poem that she remembered touching her deeply and awakening her somehow. She answered:

I think it was Blake's "The Tyger." I was given poems to copy, that was how my father taught me to do handwriting. "The Tyger" was one of them and it was so musical and mysterious. The wonderful image sank very deep very early. (Moyers, 1995, p. 347)

Whether fictional or actual, Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1967 [1789, 1794]), have been captivating readers and awakening them to the many joys of poetry for more than two hundred years. Recently, Blake's poetry has appeared in a number of children's and adolescent works of literature as a dominant theme or a symbolic touchstone. For example, in addition to Sharon Creech's Love that Dog (2001), we find Nancy Willard's Newbery Award winning A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers (1981); this older picture book captured the imaginative vision and spirit that we find in all of Blake's work.

The purpose of this article is to explore some of Blake's poetry that I find suitable for middle school readers and its relationships to a number of current works for young adults. I highlight the Songs of Innocence and of Experience and suggest how Blake might be connected to other literary and musical works. My hope is that this exploration will encourage teachers to reread or read some of Blake's poetry with their students as a means of helping them enter into his particular visionary world and the universe of poetry in general.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Most present readers probably know Blake's poetry through his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which show the "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul." From my long experience reading Blake I have found that a relatively small number of readers and teachers are familiar with his great prophetic poems. These illuminated works are long, complex, and made difficult by Blake's seemingly idiosyncratic symbolism. For example, The Book of Urizen, Milton, and Jerusalem require, for me at least, a great deal of effort, numerous readings and the use of critical studies. The Songs, however, are accessible to all readers of all ages and at all levels of literary sophistication.

The Songs of Innocence and of Experience (originally published separately as two books) is one of Blake's "illuminated books." The individual poems were skillfully and imaginatively integrated into copperplate engravings which he then colored by hand with pen or paint brush. Thus, each poem is, to use Blake's own terminology, a "Particular." These poem-engravings, even in the poorest quality facsimiles, shine and sing with a vitality that delights both eye and ear:

The verse is part of the design, the design part of the verse, in an extraordinary condensed and almost ritualistic way; the visual completeness, the insistent metres, the impersonal skill of the calligraphy, turn these poems into achieved works of art that seem to resist conventional interpretation. (Ackroyd, 1996, p. 122)

Although these works of art have multiple layers of possible meaning, several general themes arise when we read the Songs repeatedly. Some celebrate the spontaneity, naive vision, joy, and exuberance of childhood. Others are darker, ominous and explore the special concerns and fears of childhood. Perhaps they more adequately capture the zeitgeist of our present time in which "hurried," latch-key, and abused children seem not to be uncommon. Lastly, several of the poems deal with questions of morality and provide readers with models of how to live in the world.

"The Tyger"

"The Tyger" certainly is the most well-known of the Songs. Even folks who don't read poetry recognize the opening lines: "Tyger Tyger, burning bright,/In the forests of the night. . ." (Blake, 1967, unpaginated; all references to Blake's poems are from this illustrated and unpaginated collection). Over the last decade while teaching at universities and secondary schools in Ghana, Ukraine, and Norway, I found that if students knew any English poetry, they knew Blake's "The Tyger."